


Dierum Malorum

by LyricaXXX (LyricaB)



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: DubCon (maybe), First Time (sort of), Haunted Houses, Horror, Lewis Fright Fest 2014, M/M, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:17:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2557694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricaB/pseuds/LyricaXXX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gasping, Robbie forced himself to his feet though the weight of the evil on his shoulders threatened to break him. <br/>“James,” he croaked. “Get out. Run.” </p><p>He managed a step towards James and froze. The heartbeats that had been thundering in his ears went suddenly silent. </p><p>What stood in the doorway, ready to do battle for him, wasn’t James.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dierum Malorum

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Lewis Challenge Fright Fest 2014. 
> 
>  
> 
> Huge thanks to XFDryad for critique and Brit picking. Of course, I’ve been adjusting and cutting since, so the mistakes are mine. 
> 
>  
> 
> I was fascinated by two prompts...
> 
> Cedara – “The boys end up locked in at a haunted house near Oxford.” 
> 
> and 
> 
> Kat_lair – “James is fey. Run with it.” 
> 
> Inspiration being what it is, the story ideas I had from those prompts didn’t ever quite gel. And then this one took me the back of my neck and shook me. While the finished product doesn’t exactly match either prompt, I still owe thanks to Cedara and kat_lair. I don’t think this story would have happened if I hadn’t been so intrigued by those two prompts.

Robbie Lewis stepped over the threshold into the old house. 

It just felt wrong, the dilapidated old house with its crumbling brick exterior. The upper windows had looked like they were staring down at him through shattered glass eyes as he and James came up the hillside. 

And it didn’t feel any better inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the difference between the deep orange of the setting sun and the gloom of the long hallway, but he didn’t need sight to sense the difference between the cold, crisp, clean autumn air outside, and the bone chilling, musty air inside. 

The heavy front door groaned and started to close, and Robbie stepped back, caught it, and pushed it until it thudded against the bubbled, peeling paint of the hallway wall. 

Obviously, someone else had felt the same way he did about letting the door close him up in the house. Just outside the arc of scrapes the door had left on the dusty floor lay a fist sized rock. He used the toe of his shoe to slide it against the door to prop it open. 

Even with the fading sunlight slotting through the door and a hint of a breeze reaching in, stirring the tattered cobwebs overhead, he hesitated. The itch at the base of his skull, the one that had urged him to investigate the house in the first place, wriggled anew, urging him to turn around and leave. 

But with James hovering just a step ahead, wearing a questioning expression that was just waiting to break into a smirk, he could hardly walk away. 

Past James, a long corridor, painted a green that was fading to blue in places, ran the length of the house. Robbie could see doorways to at least four rooms along it, and a staircase and another room at the end. Lots of rooms to investigate. 

He sighed and followed James into the first room, a dusty, dim space that had obviously been used at some point by kids for partying if the discarded beer cans under the windows and the cigarette butts littering the fireplace were any indication. There was so little left of the glass in the windows that wind whistled through the room, doing nothing to dissipate a smell that was a cross between old cheese and black mold. 

On the peeling expanse of wall over the fireplace, someone had taken red spray paint and drawn artistic, leaping flames. 

“At least the trespassers had a sense of humor,” Robbie said, pointing at it. 

James smiled and used the toe of his shoe to poke at a lump of something dirty and rotted, probably an old blanket, in a corner. 

“You were right,” Robbie said, backing out of the room. “This was a daft idea.” 

James swept past him into the hall, ducked to avoid a low hanging cobweb, and gave an exaggerated sneeze. “I didn’t say it was daft. Just that there was nothing other than vague proximity to suggest a link between this house and the two bodies.” 

Robbie made a rude sound to show what he thought of such terms as ‘vague proximity.’ 

James grinned at him over his shoulder. “Besides, where’s your sense of adventure? Isn’t Halloween the perfect time to investigate a haunted house?” He plucked an imaginary spider off his shoulder and mimed setting it back into its web.

Robbie glanced up at a real spider, a big black one, hovering just out of reach above his head. “The only thing haunting this place is empty beer cans and a bad smell.” 

James was right. There wasn’t anything to even vaguely suggest that the murders they were investigating had anything to do with the house. Other than the itch that had crawled up the back of Robbie’s neck when he had stopped the car and peered up the hillside at the crumbling, lopsided house. 

One body had been found almost a half kilometer away, and the other one even further away in the opposite direction. And James had said as much. But he’d climbed out of the car and trudged up the hill with him anyway, long legs taking the rolls and dips and clumps of knee high grass easily while Robbie huffed and puffed along beside him. 

James took another couple of steps down the hall, tipping his head back to examine the high ceiling. “Well, we’re here now. We might as well check it out.” 

Robbie really didn’t fancy continuing on, breathing in the dusty, moldy smell, shivering from a cold that penetrated his heavy coat as if he wasn’t wearing it. But checking out the house had been his idea. And it wasn’t like he was in a hurry to get home. 

He’d already called Laura and told her to just put the candy bowl on the stoop and let the little ghosties and goblins have at it. This was one Halloween he wasn’t going to be wearing googly-eye glasses and making the trick-or-treating kids squeal when he snatched open the door. 

The two bodies—a woman who looked like she’d been frightened to death, the other a man whose body was broken like he’d been dropped from a great height—had sapped the Halloween spirit right out of him. There was nothing like real life horror to take the fun out of pretend horror. 

He’d be content to head home and sit in the back of the house with the lights out and haunt a couple of bottles of wine. He’d be very happy to head in that direction now. 

But instead, he followed James further into the house, stopping to check out the room on the opposite side of the hall. This one felt larger than the previous one, though it probably wasn’t, and it looked like someone had built a campfire right in the middle of it. 

But a fire large enough to have left a ring that size would have probably taken the house with it. And there should have been ashes and charred wood, but the floor looked smooth and swept clean. 

“James, look at this.” He glanced over his shoulder. 

James was out of sight, and Robbie stepped back into the hall to find him. 

As he turned, the corridor suddenly telescoped. It looked like in movies where the hero was in a long, narrow space went on and on, and he ran and ran but got nowhere. James looked far away instead of only a few doors down. 

Optical illusion, that, because James turned to look at him, and, suddenly, he was where he was supposed to be, just a few doors away. He was standing with his hand on the banister of the staircase and his foot on the first step, peering up. Beyond him, Robbie could see a room with a window with many small panes and a tile floor that had once been cheerful green and white squares. Probably the kitchen. 

For just a flash, James’ tall, lanky body was surrounded by a glow that seemed to reach out from his narrow shoulders and up towards the opening in the ceiling where the stairs disappeared into darkness, but that was optical illusion, too, because the sun was setting on the front of the house, not the back. And the light that was visible through the small panes behind James was gray with the beginning of dusk. 

Robbie swiped his hand over his eyes. Seeing things while he searched an abandoned house on Halloween. Just what he needed. 

Instead of calling James back as he’d intended, he said, “Let’s make this quick, yeah? I don’t fancy walking back down that hillside in the dark.” 

James nodded, then pointed, not up as Robbie had expected, but back. “I just want to check and see if there’s a basement.” 

“Yeah,” Robbie muttered. “Dead bodies, old house, Halloween. Let’s find the basement. Good thinking, Jim.” But he didn’t say it loud enough for James to hear. He’d never hear the end of it if he let on that he was feeling a bit spooked. 

He pointed to indicate he was going into the front room, and James gave him a thumbs up. He pulled the collar of his black coat up tighter around his neck, then continued on into the kitchen and out of sight. 

After a quick glance to make sure the hallway still looked like a normal hallway, Robbie stepped back into the front room. 

It must have something in its day. Sculpted mouldings along the top edge of the walls, a high ceiling. A huge marble fireplace, flanked by an oddity for an old country house, banks of floor-to-ceiling windows on either side that ran the length of the front wall. They looked out over a spectacular view of rolling hills and autumn foliage. Amazingly, most of the glass panes in the windows were still intact. Only a few down near the floor were broken, letting in a slight whisper of cold wind. 

The remnants of a light fixture hung above the dark spot, but there was no corresponding circle of soot on the ceiling that would have been created by a fire on the floor. 

He squatted down and ran a finger over the edge of the black circle. His finger came away tingling from the contact with the cold floor, but clean. There wasn’t any ash or dust, and the floor was smooth, not charred like he’d thought. 

Still kneeling, Robbie turned slowly, shoe soles squeaking on wood, and surveyed the room. 

There weren’t any bottles or cigarette butts. Barely any dust. There wasn’t even a hint of a cobweb in the corners or on the skeleton of chandelier, as if no spider would dare cross over the threshold. 

That itch started at the base of his skull again, stronger this time. The hair on his nape stood up. 

The room was unnaturally empty. Creepily empty. It smelled empty and hollow. 

A sudden wisp of air swirled around his ankles, stirring up not even a particle of dust. It wasn’t surprising that as the sun set, the air would grow colder, but this was an unnatural cold. The kind of cold that seeped out of the lockers in the morgue. 

He stood. Something wasn’t right. 

“James?” 

The cold touched him again. Like ribbons, weaving around his ankles and sliding up his legs. It caressed, light as air and blue, like the pallor of a dead body. 

He took a step towards the door, and the icy ribbons of air thickened into something he could almost see. 

When his Mark was 12, he’d gone through an astronomy phase and taken to star gazing out in the yard with an old telescope. And one night, Mark had focused on a nebula and shown him how he could only see it if he didn’t look at it. When he’d peered through the eyepiece and looked at the black circle of sky from the corners of his eyes, a vague white shape of the nebula had appeared, as if by magic, in his peripheral vision. 

This reminded him of that pearly white patch gases and space dust. Like there was something gray and translucent weaving its way up his body, but he could only see it if he didn’t really look at it. 

“James!” He raised his voice a little this time. 

He took another step. His feet felt heavy, weighted down as if he was walking through mud. 

The sensation of invisible smoke curled around his waist. He looked down. There was nothing there. But there was something there, and his mind stuttered over the contradictory information. 

His heart started to trip, a fast, excited beat that sent blood rushing into his hands and the tips of his ears. 

The cold seeped higher, slipping under his coats and between the buttons of his shirt to slither across his heart as if seeking the source of the faster rhythm. 

He took a deep breath. It was just cold air coming through the broken windows. He was letting his imagination and James’ comments about Halloween and haunted houses get to him. 

And the thing that wasn’t there found his bare hands. A sensation like burning ice wrapped itself around his wrists. 

He stifled a gasp and told himself to stay calm, to be steady. But this wasn’t like facing a suspect with a gun. This wasn’t like staring into the eyes of a madman or racing after a fleeing felon. There was nothing there to face down. To confront. 

Nothing there, but it was touching him just the same. Cold, invisible pressure weighing him down. The cold seeped up his sleeve, and his elbow went numb. 

This couldn’t be happening. There was nothing there! 

“James!” Panic bled into his voice now, and he didn’t care how much James snickered at him later. He wanted away from this cold. From this smoky optical illusion. 

And in his head, he heard the sigh. A sound so hateful, so foul, it scoured the inside of his skull. 

For the first time, he felt it. 

It. 

Not just blue cold and ribbons of air. 

It. 

Not just his imagination. 

_It. A consciousness. Rancid and evil._

It gurgled with pleasure as fear exploded in his mind. As his thoughts imploded. 

_Blood and gore. Maggots crawling on his face, tickling his eyelashes. The body of a young woman, her face stretched in a rictus of fear, her fingers frozen into claws._

Horror flooded him. 

_The smell of putrified flesh. A body that had floated for days in the Cherwell, flesh flaking off its bloated face._

The thing holding onto him chortled, quivered with pleasure though it had no body. It liked the images it saw in his mind. It wanted more. 

_A woman screamed, hands scrabbling in the air. She fought through hopeless paralyzing fear as the knife came towards her. As it punched through her flesh._

_Robbie felt the blade tear his skin. Lived it. Her terror, the strange sliding sensation of sharp metal pushing into her body. The sudden shock of pain. Blood spurting._

He knew her face. She was a murder victim from one of his early cases with Morse. 

Robbie’s stomach lurched, bowels going hot and liquid. It felt like his intestines were trying to twine around his spine. Crawl up out of his body. 

He opened his mouth to shout for James, then snapped it shut. If he shouted, James would come running, and then the thing would grab him, too. 

He had to get out. Find James. Get away. 

He slid one foot, then the other towards the edge of the circle. It sounded like tires screeching on pavement. 

_Tires screeched._

The sound, pummeling at the inside of his skull, ripping at his ears, gave him the power he needed to tear his feet off the floor. To throw himself away from the dark circle, towards the windows and the setting sun. If he could just get out of the room. Into the sunlight. Into chill autumn air that would be like a summer day compared to this unnatural cold. 

The invisible tendrils stretched to stay with him like a rubbery octopus reaching out for a victim. Groping along his skin. 

_Tires screeched. A woman screamed._

Robbie fell forward, slamming against one of the windows. The glass gave under his weight, but held. Bile shot up into his throat as every muscle in his body clenched. He knew what was coming. Knew what this thing was hooking up from the depths of his mind. 

He doubled over in pain. Fell to the floor. Thud of flesh on wood as he landed on his knees. 

_Thud of an impact, steel on flesh. Pain. Bones breaking. Gasping for air as blood filled her lungs. Drowning. Gasping. Blood streaming into her eyes, coloring the sky red. As she called his name with her dying breath._

Val! His Val. Robbie opened his mouth, but he couldn’t scream. He could only moan. He balled his hands into fists and stabbed his own palms with his fingernails. The pain didn’t help. The image started up again. 

_Pain. Bones breaking._

A voice, hard as steel, colder than the unnatural air, thundered, “Let him go!” The words echoed in the empty room. Pierced through the screaming in his mind. 

James! James had come for him. 

Gasping, Robbie forced himself to his feet though the weight of the evil on his shoulders threatened to break him. “James,” he croaked. “Get out. Run.” 

He managed a step towards James and froze. The heartbeats that had been thundering in his ears went suddenly silent. 

What stood in the doorway, ready to do battle for him, wasn’t James. 

It looked like James, blonde and tall and lanky. It was wearing James’ black coat. It had James’ long face, his big ears, his eyes, narrow and fierce and angrier than Robbie had ever seen them. But whatever it was, it wasn’t James. 

It was something that looked like James, surrounded by golden energy that sparkled and shimmered the way sunlight shimmered on James’ blonde gold hair. A James shape encased in power that pulsated like something alive. 

Robbie blinked his eyes to clear them, but the light didn’t disappear. It swirled and rippled, elegant and graceful like clouds shifting in the wind. Became, for a moment, almost wing-like as it spun towards the ceiling, billowing like transparent silk. But at the same time, it seethed like something that could melt the flesh off his bones. 

For just a fleeting second of horror, he thought some gold monster held James captive, the way he was held captive in invisible black. 

But he’d seen it before. Many times before. 

Flashes of it when James stood against something very dark. Sparkling light when James stood against a brick wall or in the shadows at dusk. A golden glow when James sat, long fingers curled around a pint, with the sun setting behind him. And Robbie had told himself, every time, that it was only a trick of the light flashing off James’ tanned skin and blonde hair. It was only the sun, setting behind him. 

But it wasn’t a trick of the light. It was James. Robbie could see it clearly now. He didn’t know why he’d never understood it before. 

He took a step back, away from that seething glow, and invisible blackness closed around his body like the arms of a lover. 

He barely felt it through his shock. He’d thought he’d faced betrayal when James had lied to him about his past. Withheld information. Not trusted him. But this was worse. This was like James had reached into his chest and scooped out his heart. 

It wasn’t just that James wasn’t who Robbie thought he was. James wasn’t _what_ he thought he was. He was...something else. Something more. Not human, the way this amorphous black thing that plucked at him wasn’t human. 

What was it? What was this thing that he’d thought was his friend? 

“Robbie, it’s me.” 

It had James’ voice. The melodious voice that, Robbie realized with a start, he’d always thought of as golden. 

The shimmering thing stretched out its hand. It had James’ eyes. His extraordinary bluegreen eyes. 

Robbie stepped away from it, sidled along the windows, pressing harder against the glass. “ _What are you_?” His voice was a croak, threaded with betrayal. 

The thing that was James rocked back as if he’d been punched. The cloud of shimmering gold shifted with him, contracting until it barely hugged him, bleaching to pale yellow around the edges as if he was absorbing a shock. It shivered like something alive and in pain. 

And the black thing chortled. A sound like grinding glass in Robbie’s mind. 

It wrapped itself tighter around him, shoving itself back into his awareness. It was as pleased with Robbie’s shock at seeing James for what he really was as it was with the murder victims and pain in his mind. 

It burned him all over, rushed over his skin as if he stood naked in an icy wind. Cold fire, like icicles in his blood, scraping inside his veins. It draped a tentacle of cold around his waist. 

Along his ribs, his skin froze, blackened, cracked under the touch. He could feel his shirt against his body. His senses told him that under the cotton, his skin lay smooth and unblemished, but at the same time, he could feel his flesh blistering, charring, flaking away, leaving muscle and bone exposed. He groaned with imaginary pain. 

“Let him go. He’s mine.” The James voice cracked with fury. Not gold now so much as fire. 

The thing laughed. “I believe you not,” it hissed. 

Robbie grabbed at his temples. The golden James voice he could hear, but he didn’t hear the dark thing’s voice. He felt it. Crawling on his skin, slithering through his mind, slimy and cold. And he couldn’t shut it out. 

“You would not leave such a sweet morsel unmarked.” It ran its awareness over his body, evil and cold on his skin, searching, questing. “Such a sweet thing. So new. So fresh.” 

Robbie curled in on himself, trying to shield himself from the touch. Rot and slime on his skin. Ice tipped daggers in his mind. 

The thing that was James said his name, soft yet commanding. 

In response, the black thing traced an invisible finger, so cold it felt like a scalpel, down his spine. 

_His flesh parted as Laura drew a scalpel down his spine. Fresh, red blood welled up in its wake. He heard his skin split, felt tiny pops like raindrops on a tin roof as his spine pushed through. He screamed, trying to tell Laura he was alive. That his heart was still beating. But no sound came out._

The thing burbled with pleasure. 

“Robbie,” James said his name again, coaxing, like a caress. “Come to me.” 

Robbie stared at James through a haze of pain. He couldn’t see the bluegreen of James’ eyes through the golden aura that seethed around him. 

Robbie reached for him anyway. He didn’t care what James was. It couldn’t be any worse than the invisible thing that held him with unseen tendrils of smoke and evil. 

“Find the strength,” James said. “Come to me. It won’t let you go unless it believes you belong to me.” 

The thing pressed on Robbie harder. Stripped images of blood and gore and tattered bodies from his own nightmares. The smell of burned flesh. A knife dripping with blood. A statue with pieces of brain clinging to it. 

It crawled on him, testing for breaches in his skin. It was searching for blood. He could feel it, unseen thing, questing blindly, wriggling. It felt like slime on his skin, like the foulness that poured out when something rotten burst open. 

The monster poked and prodded at the edges of his mind, trying to break his gaze away from James. 

He was the prize in a tug-of-war between them. And neither cared whether he was torn into pieces as they struggled over him, tugging at his mind, yanking at his consciousness. 

_Look at me. Feed me. Come to me. Choose me._

The black thing wanted him to give up. It wanted him to collapse in fear. It wanted all the horror and anger and pain that lay in his mind. 

If Robbie would just yield, it would slowly suck him dry until he had nothing left to feel. And that would be easy, wouldn’t it? To feel nothing. How long would it take? Until this thing had sucked him dry. Until he felt nothing. 

A long time, he thought. A long, long time, if it could hold off. It wanted him with an eagerness that was disgusting, and it would feed on him for a long time, if it could manage it. 

He closed his eyes. He was shaking so hard his jacket whispered against the window panes. 

“Robbie.” The voice of the beautiful and terrible thing that stood in the doorway was like melting gold in his head. “Don’t give in.” 

He looked up. He could see the bluegreen of James’ eyes again, shining through the aura. 

James held out his hand. James, who smelled of warm sunlight and cigarettes. 

And with a rush of longing he wasn’t even sure was his own, Robbie wanted the safety of that outstretched hand more than he wanted to breathe. 

With a curse, he wrenched free of what held him and stumbled toward James. 

But at the last second, he stopped just short of James’ outstretched hand, just short of the iridescent aura. 

James’ gaze bore into his. “It’s all right. It’s me.” 

Instead of taking James’ hand, he turned and stepped into place at James’ side, tightening down on the quaking fear that rumbled in his gut. He forced his muscles rigid so that the shaking in his arms and shoulders stilled. So that he could lift his chin and face the thing that had held him. 

There was nothing there. But he could still feel it. Cold and evil. Wanting. 

He turned his head, looking towards the dark spot on the floor from the corners of his eyes. There was still almost nothing there. Just a swirling, nebulous pale gray that roiled and shifted at the edge of his vision. 

“You see,” James said softly. “He’s mine.” 

The thing roiled and hissed. “It is not marked.” 

“He came to me.” 

“That proves nothing.” 

James lifted his hand, palm out towards Robbie. The golden aura brushed him as James drew his hand down him without touching. Outlining the shape of his skull, the angle of his shoulder, the curve of his back. 

James didn’t touch him, didn’t make contact with even the quilted material of his coat. But it felt like James stroked his naked skin with a light, teasing caress. Like he held a warm fire in the palm of his hand. 

The thing hissed as if it hated the idea of the light on him. Its hatred of James breached the space between them. 

James’ touch shimmered on Robbie’s skin the way sunlight rippled and danced on water. It set his nerves afire with delight. He felt it across his nipples and in his groin. In that sensitive spot in the small of his back. The tingling radiated out across his back and wrapped around him. Robbie groaned, unable to stop the sound from escaping. 

And when James drew his hand back, Robbie followed it. Shifting so that the back of his arm and shoulder were nearly touching James. Stepping into James’ aura.

Into warmth and light and a crystalline energy that tingled on his skin like static electricity. 

His knees almost buckled. He flushed with shame for doubting James, and he reached back blindly, hoping that somehow he could convey through touch that he knew how wrong he had been. 

Because whatever James was, Robbie could feel the goodness, the rightness of him, on his skin, in his mind. The same as he’d been able to feel the wrongness of the other. 

James put a warm, heavy hand on his shoulder and squeezed, communicating reassurance without a word. 

The muscles in Robbie’s back and shoulders and neck that had been knotted with fear relaxed under the warmth and pressure of James’ fingers. If he hadn’t stopped himself, he would have leaned back. Dropped his head back and rested it on James’ shimmering shoulder. 

“You see?” James voice held a note of warmth that Robbie imagined was pride. “He’s mine.” 

The thing hissed. “You lie. You would not risk such a sweet thing to go unmarked in this world.” 

It stretched out towards Robbie. Gathering its strength, readying itself to reach for him. 

The images of horror that simmered at the edge of Robbie’s consciousness shifted, like flowers turning towards the sun, towards the darkness. 

Robbie stood up taller and braced himself. He’d broken away from it once, resisted it once. But he wasn’t sure he could do it again. He glanced back at James and said, “Mark me, if it’ll stop that thing from touching me.” 

“No.” Pain slid over James’ face. His eyes darkened in denial. 

A surge of elation like electricity shot out from the black thing’s consciousness. 

Robbie twitched with it. 

James caught his upper arm in a strong grip and pushed him back, putting himself between Robbie and the roiling dark energy. “Just back away. Stay with me, no matter what.” 

And he started backing towards the door, reaching back with one arm to keep Robbie against him. 

But James had miscalculated how much the thing wanted him. 

Before they could get out the door, it reached through the light that surrounded James. 

The thing screeched in Robbie’s mind. Reaching through the aura hurt it. Robbie could feel its anguish, its hatred of James. 

The invisible energy searched for Robbie. Found him. Pain screamed across his skin. The scent of rotting flesh filled his nostrils. 

James wheeled on him, shoved him through the door so hard he stumbled. 

Robbie fell into wall on the other side of the hall. His forehead hit the hard surface before James caught him from behind and steadied him. 

Flashes of silver and black jittered across his vision, but James didn’t give him time to clear his head. James half carried, half shoved him down the hallway, out the door. 

Outside, in the light, James paused, gaze darting across the overgrown yard and the rutted driveway falling away down the hillside. It gave Robbie time to catch his breath. 

The sun had dipped below the wooded copse across the road. Thin rays of light shone through the trees, painting the sloping hillside with large blots of shadow. The cold evening air felt like a tropical breeze compared to the unnatural cold of the house. 

Surely the thing wouldn’t follow them out into the light. Into fresh air. But even as he thought it, Robbie saw movement to the side of his vision. Grayish tendrils like smoke, seeping through the broken windows of the room they’d just escaped, crawling up the house. They moved like something swimming in the depths of the ocean, feeling their way towards him, clinging to the shadows. 

James grabbed his arm and dragged Robbie up against him. And licked him. Ran his tongue, hot and slick and soft as butter, up the side of his face from his chin to his forehead. 

Robbie gasped, surprised by what James was doing, and even more, shocked by the way it felt. Like lights were winking on beneath his skin. Lighting him up from inside. He turned toward James, reaching for him. Wanting... He didn’t know what. 

The gray at the edges of his vision fluttered and thinned, drawing back, as if it could feel the radiance James had painted on him. The glow inside of him. 

Robbie wobbled, feeling drunk and luminous. 

James dragged him down the steps. Across the overgrown yard and down towards their car. Tugging him along in his wake with a grip on the sleeve of his heavy coat. “Move, Robbie. The sun is going down.” 

Robbie saw how much the light had dimmed, just in the brief time since they’d come outside. He turned to take the straightest course down the hillside, and James dragged him back. “No! Stay out of the shadows. Stay in the sunlight.”

He pulled Robbie in a downward zigzag course, out of the lane that lead to the car, onto rough ground, back into the rutted path, out again. 

Robbie followed him, slipping and sliding on the uneven ground. Twisting and turning around tree shaped patches of shadow to stay in the weak sunlight. 

He could feel the thing coming after them, slithering down the hill, gathering momentum as the sun slipped further down behind the trees. As the pale orange sunlight faded to pink. Edging towards gray. As the shadows grew deeper. 

And when the light was gone... What then? Would even the gold light of James be protection? Could they drive far enough, fast enough, to outrun it? 

James slipped, and Robbie lost his footing, taking James with him. They fell. Robbie slid along the hillside on his hip, his back. He lost his grip on James. The scent of crushed grass followed him as he rolled into shadow. 

And the thing caught him. Wrapped tendrils around him, then cocooned him, like a spider wrapping its prey. In the shadows, it was completely invisible. It was stronger. 

It snuffed out the warmth James had kindled in him. Robbie fought to escape, but nightmares swept his mind away. He writhed as unspeakable horrors spilled out. He gave up and screamed as Val died, over and over again. The car breaking her beautiful body. The car breaking his body. Pain and broken bones and blood filling his lungs. 

He died behind of the eyes of a young woman. That thing killed her with pain and terror. Forcing her to live and relive the horrors it dredged up from her mind. And Robbie lived her end, her terror, knowing it was going to be his end, too. That his body would be found the same as hers, his face stretched in a rictus of terror, his fingers bent like claws. 

And then James was there. In his mind. Warm and musical and familiar. Soothing him with wordless sounds. Soft humming comfort in James’ velvet voice. 

James wrapped around him like a warm blanket. Arms holding him, shielding him. Saying his name over and over again until his mind came back to him, and his body remembered being whole and unbroken, recalled breathing without pain. 

The shell of black nightmares in which the thing had encased him cracked under the light that was James. 

And James did what the thing had done. Cocooned them in a web of gold like gossamer. Like feathers. Overlapping strands of shimmering light that, like the blackness, Robbie felt more than saw. 

Beneath him, the ground was cold, damp seeping through his trousers. Overhead, stars were popping out in the dark gray sky. And just at the edge of the light in which James held him, that thing swarmed. Probing, battering, searching for a weakness. 

Robbie clung to James, fingers digging into the arms that held him. Without shame, he begged, “Don’t let it touch me again.” Being strong and fearless wouldn’t save him. It would only prolong the terror and pain. That thing was going to break him. There were too many nightmares in his head. Too many images of blood and horror. 

He barely knew his own voice, cracked and hoarse from screaming. “James, do whatever you have to do. Mark me.” 

James held him tighter, pressed his face against the side of Robbie’s face. His voice was as broken as Robbie’s. “I can’t. You don’t know what you’re asking. To mark you, I have to take your will. Your freedom.” 

Robbie shook against the warmth and safety that was James. And knew, the way he knew that thing was going to break him, that James couldn’t hold out forever. He couldn’t keep that thing away from him forever. 

“What good will freedom do me if I’m dead?” Or worse, alive and living through all those nightmares again and again. 

James’ breath caught in his throat, a sound like a sob. “Robbie... It requires blood. And semen. It requires that you take my blood or semen into you.” As if that was reason enough for refusal. As if he thought Robbie would find his touch, his essence, as abhorrent as that of the other. 

Shocked, Robbie pulled back from him. Not out of the protective light, but back away from James’ body. From where he was plastered to James’ body. 

“Body fluids have power,” James said, tracing a finger along the side of his face. “Saliva, blood, semen, urine. They bind.” 

And now Robbie understood why James had licked him. It was a marking of a sort. Putting his scent on Robbie. But it wasn’t enough to save him. 

He understood. He would have to do more. Give more. He would have to submit to James. 

The shiver that ran over his skin wasn’t all fear. And that was as shocking as what he was about to do. 

He flushed, remembering the way his body had responded to James’ touch in the house. The way the gold energy had sizzled on his skin. The way his whole body had lit up when James’ saliva touched him. 

What would it be like to be consumed by that? By James? Despite his panic, the roiling in his stomach, arousal pooled in his groin. 

He turned and shifted so that the whole length of his body was pressed against James. Back to chest, thighs against thighs, arse fitted into the curve of James’ hips. “Do it.” 

James made a small lost sound, half gasp, half groan. Mixed defeat and arousal. 

Robbie nearly sobbed with relief. He knew acquiescence when he heard it. 

James would mark him. He would be safe. No more screams. No more questing evil on his skin. 

He shuddered as James touched him, anxiety sliding into his relief. 

James seemed to know. He rested against Robbie, unmoving. Just holding him. Holding him until it seemed that time slowed, then stopped. Only the darkening sky showed that time was passing at all. 

Then, still moving slowly, James stroked his hand across Robbie’s scalp, running his fingers through his hair, his fingertips across his forehead. Down his cheek. 

It was the oddest caress. But it felt right. And it eased his panic. 

James’ hand moved down the front of his body, skimming the buttons on his shirt. And time sped up again. The stars spinning overhead like a film speeded up. 

James pushed his clothing away, making him naked. 

Cold night air followed James’ hands down his body. But it was only air, not vapory madness. 

The thing, hissing, eased back. But not in defeat. It had lost the tug-of-war that had threatened to unravel Robbie’s brain, but it wasn’t routed. Satisfaction bubbled at its edges. 

Something wasn’t right. 

“James,” he whispered. “Something...” 

But then it was gone. The thing was gone. For the first time since he reached down to slide his fingers across that dark spot on the floor, he couldn’t feel its presence. There was nothing hovering nearby that wanted to tear his heart out through his mind. 

There was only James. Warm and radiant. 

James wrapped his arms tighter around Robbie. Blanketing him in such heat that sweat broke out on his forehead and his muscles went limp with relaxation. 

James’ golden aura enclosed them, rippling and surging. Enfolding him like wings. Wings that shimmered and caressed. 

Robbie’s cock swelled, the only part of his body that wasn’t floating and limp with bliss. 

James entered him, hard and slick and burning with goodness. 

A rush of luminous gold surged through him. Danced over his skin. Rich and strong and pure. James on him and in him, thrusting his shining essence into his blood and his bones, painting his skin with magic. 

He was flying, lifted by glowing, feathery wings. Rising up towards stars that burned like diamonds overhead. Into a sky gone black. Velvet black. Velvet like James’ voice. 

And he thought, aware of the absurdity, ‘This is what it’s like to be fucked by an angel.’ 

A husky catch of gleaming laughter, nearly a sob, vibrated through his bones. James’ whispered in his ear, “I’m no angel.” 

*****

Robbie woke with a start. He’d been dreaming that the stars were singing to him, announcing the rise of the moon in voices like crystal. 

Through the window of the car, he could see inky sky packed with stars. A section of the moon, full and bright, was just visible at the bottom edge of the window. 

He tilted his head to look at it and froze as he realized where he was. 

He reached back tentatively, not sure he believed what his senses were telling him. But the twist of his spine and the ache in his right hip told him he was where he thought he was. Lying in the back seat of his car, his legs bent so that he would fit, one foot dangling down towards the floor. 

James was stretched along his back, breathing softly and evenly against the back of his head, long, skinny legs pushed against the backs of his thighs and one long, skinny arm creating a hard ridge between his ribs and the car seat. He wasn’t sure how James was fitted in there, as long as his legs were. 

James’ other arm was more comfortable. It was wrapped around him, hand splayed across his heart, and Robbie suspected it was all that was keeping him from shivering. His trousers and his suit coat were twisted around his legs and his torso as if he’d been thrashing in his sleep. 

His ears were cold, and his nose, and his fingertips. A swath of cold as wide as his hand lay across his belly where his shirt had pulled loose from his trousers, exposing his skin to the night air. 

The heavy coat that he should have been wearing was wadded up under his head as a pillow. And James’ coat lay across their legs, trailing down into the floor of the car. 

He reached to tug at the tails of his shirt, to pull it down over his stomach, and the slight movement almost pitched him off the seat. 

He was right on the edge of it. Probably all that was keeping all of him from sliding off into the floor was James’ arm looped around him. 

If he tried to sit up, he was probably going to slide into the floor, but his back was going to be a knotted, twisted ball of pain if he didn’t move. He groaned and shifted, reaching out to brace himself against the back of the front seat. 

And the events of the night came crashing down on him. 

_James. Golden James protecting him. Naked against him. Orgasm so intense it needed a new word. James inside of him. Bliss that was like floating, flying. Flying apart._

That thing. Evil, invisible thing. Nightmares and screaming. Gnawing at him from the inside out. 

James’ arms tightened around him and his breath tickling Robbie’s ear as he whispered, “Shhhhh... It’s okay. You’re okay.” 

Robbie stopped fighting to sit up, but he remained stiff in James’ grip. He took a deep breath. 

A sliver of silver cut across the back of the seat in front of him. The moon, rising, casting a pale glow through the car window. In the dim light, with the scent of leather seats and cold autumn air and James all around him, his memory of horror and bliss seemed unreal. 

A dream. It had to be a dream. A nightmare. That couldn’t have really happened. The house and the evil thing chasing them. The other...James and him. Naked. James inside of him. 

His mind shied away from it. It couldn’t have happened. 

But if that was all a dream, then how had he gotten here? He remembered them running and falling as that thing chase him. But he couldn’t remember getting back to the car. 

“Was I dreaming?” he asked. “Was all that real? That thing, was it real?” 

“You remember?” James asked, and he sounded surprised, evasive. 

“Why wouldn’t I?” Robbie snapped. “Answer me. Did all that happen? That thing? The...us?” 

“The entity. Yes, it’s real,” James answered. 

Robbie shook his head, denial flooding through him, and started to get up again. 

James tightened his grip for just a moment, reassuring him, then relaxed it. 

Robbie didn’t want to believe it. But he couldn’t dismiss what his own memories were telling him. James, with a golden aura swimming around him. The house. The room. The black spot. That thing, not quite visible, setting off nightmares in his mind, explosions of fear and suffering. 

He shuddered with remembered pain, and for a moment, gold energy flared up around him. Rippling and warm. Showing him that it was real. The horror, and the warmth. And he realized that no matter how much he might want to get up, he was where he was safest. 

He sank back against James. It was odd that he didn’t feel more odd, lying against James. Wrapped in his arms. 

“What was it?” he whispered. “What are you?” 

James’ body stiffened against him, just a tiny tightening of his muscles, and his fingers flexed against Robbie’s chest. Then he took a deep breath and Robbie could tell he was forcing himself to relax. The golden aura thinned to wisps of yellow, then dissipated. 

James delayed answering by reaching down and pulling his coat up higher over them. But they didn’t really needed it. The warmth that had come with the flare of energy lingered. 

Finally, James said, “There aren’t any names in your language. For it. Or me.” 

Robbie opened his mouth to protest. Shook his head with wordless annoyance. 

James stopped him. “If a name would make you feel better, in Latin, you would call it dierum malorum. Ancient evil. It has no name, or if it had one, it doesn’t remember it now.” 

Cold spilled down his spine despite the warmth of James’ body against his back. “And you?” 

James shook his head again, but after a moment, as if he was dredging up a memory long forgotten, he said, “Ir˙ula, we were sometimes called.” 

“But what are you, James? An angel?” Robbie shivered, but not with fear. He remembered what James had whispered in his ear. And what he’d been doing as he whispered it. 

James laughed against his neck, with that same throaty vibration as before. “No. I’m not an angel. You have no idea how much I’m not an angel.” 

“But you’re not...human?” 

James didn’t answer for so long Robbie thought maybe he wasn’t going to. But finally, he said, “I live in human form. But my essence isn’t human.” 

Robbie snorted with disbelief. But didn’t this explain so many things about James? His solitary ways. His intensity. His awkwardness, as if sometimes he didn’t quite fit in his own skin. The way he frequently seemed just a bit out of step with everyone around him. 

‘Except for me,’ Robbie thought. Even when they were at odds, James never really seemed out of step with him. 

“And did you...? Did we...?” He couldn’t believe they had. That he had. He would feel it in his body if they’d done that. And all he felt was cold along his chest and belly and stiff from the uncomfortable position. But no aches or pains in places where he didn’t normally feel aches and pains. 

James’ hand pressed lightly against his heart, then relaxed. “No. We didn’t. I put that in your mind. That thing...it feeds on negative emotions. On terror and pain. So I put the fantasy in your mind that I was binding you. You believed it, so it believed it.” 

“So I’m not...marked? And we didn’t really...?” 

“No.” 

A little stab of disappointment flickered through him, a pinprick of cold light that tweaked his nerves. It disappeared the moment he turned his surprise on it. He didn’t really want all that to have happened, did he? 

As if he knew what Robbie was feeling, James said softly, “I wouldn’t do that to you. You don’t understand what it means. And to have done it then, with that thing battering at you, when you felt like you had no other choice...it would have been rape. And I know that invading your mind wasn’t any better, but...” James’ hand flexed on him again. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of anything else.” 

Robbie nodded, remembering suddenly the way the entity had seemed so pleased when it felt him beg for James’ touch, when it felt James agree. “That must have been why.” 

“What?” 

“When you—when I thought you were going to mark me, that thing was pleased. I couldn’t figure out why. But maybe it was pleased that it had forced you to mark me whether I wanted it or not.” 

He paused for a second. Did evil entities have that much subtly to their thinking? He didn’t want to get close enough to find out. “Is it still up there?” 

James shrugged, as much as he could shrug, lying sandwiched between the car seat and Robbie.

“I’m not sure. I can’t feel it, but then I didn’t feel it yesterday until I started down into the basement.” 

“It was in the basement?” 

James nodded again, his movement vibrating through the wadded up coat they were sharing as a pillow. “Things like that keep to the dark. It has very little power in the light. Probably the only reason it came up before the sun had set was to get to you.” 

Robbie’s stomach felt like it turned over. The idea that what he’d experienced had been while that thing’s power was weak made his bones ache. 

James flexed his fingers on Robbie’s chest. Soothing him. “I wonder...”

He was silent for so long that Robbie asked, “You wonder what?” 

“I think it’s what killed those two people.”

“It killed the woman,” Robbie said grimly. “I felt it last night. How she died.” 

James soothed him with his fingers again. Just the simplest movement of warmth across his chest. 

James shifted, rolled his head back, leaving a cool spot on the back of Robbie’s head where his words had been warming his scalp. “But it doesn’t have a corporeal body, so I can’t figure how it got the woman’s body out of the basement and dumped her a kilometer down the road.” 

James clicked his teeth together, thinking, then continued, “Maybe... Maybe it used the other victim. The man. Maybe it forced him to move the body.” 

“But then how did it kill him?” 

“It could have made him kill himself.” James voice was flat. 

Robbie’s throat closed. It didn’t seem possible. Or rational. Yet...he’d felt what that thing could do to a man’s mind. In the dark, with its power at its strongest, could it have taken him to the point where he would physically break himself? 

He had nothing in his stomach, but the muscles rebelled anyway. He gagged, stiffening so that he almost slid off the edge of the seat. He threw out his hand and braced himself. Bile burned the back of his throat. 

James pulled him back, settling Robbie in against his warmth, and slid a hand down to cover his belly. His long fingers spread wide, a starfish of warmth. 

The churning in Robbie’s gut eased, soothed by the tendrils of warmth that seeped from James’ fingers. 

Robbie waited to see if his stomach would stay calm, and when it did, said, “I’ll have to get you to do that next time I’ve had too many pints.” 

James laughed softly. “What makes you think I haven’t already?” 

Robbie started, and James laughed harder. 

And for a moment, Robbie saw a warm glow surround them. James’ gold, but with the silver of the moon reflected in it. 

Robbie wondered what it would be like to be marked by James. How much more intense would that be? James had said it wasn’t something he’d want, but...he wasn’t sure he believed him. And how much had he already been marked, changed, to even be thinking like that? For it to feel so nice, so comfortable, to just lie there, enfolded in shimmering warmth. 

But the real world, and the unreal one, intruded. “How do we stop it? Can you kill it?” he asked. 

James’ arm tightened around him. 

Robbie was beginning to be able to decipher the different emotions in the way James’ arm contracted across his chest. This grip was anxious. 

With his voice filled with regret, James said, “I don’t think so, not alone. Not anymore. I’ve been human for too long.” 

Robbie knew there was something James had been about to say that he’d cut off. He knew, in his gut, that James might not be lying to him, but there was something he wasn’t telling him. There was something James could do. 

“So what are we going to do? We can’t just leave it up there.” Leaving was exactly what Robbie wanted to do, where that thing was concerned. Get as far from it, from the house, as he could. But the nightmares he’d experienced last night were nothing compared to what he’d dream if he knew that thing was there, waiting for some innocent person to stumble into its trap. 

James sighed. “We’re not going to do anything. I’m going to take you home, and then I’ll come back and see what I can do.” 

“You’re not coming back here alone!” This time Robbie did get up. It wasn’t graceful. He pushed James’ arm off him and turned and almost fell into the floor, but he managed to right himself and turn around so he could see James’ pale face in the moonlight. 

James sat up, too. Slid over to make room for him. “Robbie.” His voice had that steely finality to it that Robbie had heard in the house when James had confronted the entity. “You can’t come back here. You’re too vulnerable. The next time it touches you, it’ll know you’re not marked. And it won’t back away from you.” 

His annoyance overflowed. “Marked! What the hell does that mean? Why would something like that care if you’ve put some stamp of ownership on me body?” 

“Even a dierum malorum has a code it honors.” 

Robbie sputtered. “Well, that’s beyond daft.” 

James shrugged, spreading his hands wide, acknowledging the absurdity of what he’d said. “We’re not human, Robbie. We come from a different time, with different sensibilities. The marking of a soul...even to that thing, it’s sacrosanct.” Energy sparked between his fingertips. 

Robbie turned and slid back, sitting beside James on the car seat the way they sat together on his couch when they were watching telly. Not quite touching, but close enough that he could feel James’ warmth along his arm and his thigh. That commonplace world seemed very far away. But the comfort and ease of sitting beside James felt the same. 

There was no way he was going to let James come back here alone. No matter how much the idea of facing that thing again frightened him. He steeled himself and said, “We have to make sure it can’t hurt anybody else. I... I wouldn’t be able to stand meself if I didn’t make sure. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

“It might not even be there anymore,” James said. “It might just slither away back to where it came from.” 

Still distracted by the idea of James ditching him to come back alone, Robbie thought he’d missed something James had said. “I don’t understand. Why would it go? Where would it go?” 

“This is Halloween,” James answered. Then when Robbie just looked at him, “Samhain.” 

James looked at him with exasperated expression he always got when he had information he thought Robbie should already grasp. “This is the time of the year when the veils between the worlds are thin. When spirits can cross over into this world. Maybe it will be drawn back when the veils thicken.” 

It sounded unbelievable to Robbie, but then, hadn’t the whole night been that way? If he believed part of it, then it wasn’t such a stretch to accept the rest. 

As if sensing his acceptance, James said with a wry lightness, “Well, if it was here all the time, we’d be knee deep in bodies, wouldn’t we?”

“That’s a comforting thought,” Robbie said sarcastically. “But I’m still not letting you come back here alone.” 

James’ lightness disappeared, the corners of his mouth dipping down. He slid sideways, lifting his arm so that he could slide it around Robbie’s shoulders, his other hand lifting to touch Robbie’s face gently. 

Robbie stiffened and pulled back, but then forced himself to relax. After all they’d been through, it seemed silly to be uncomfortable with James touching him. Besides, they’d always touched each other a bit. Maybe not so intimately as this, but enough that Laura had teased them about it. 

Laura! She was probably worried about him. About them. He was surprised she hadn’t called already. He started to reach for his phone. But he didn’t have a clue what he was going to tell her, and it might be better to wait until he figured it out. 

James had pulled his hand back when Robbie stiffened, but now he stroked just the tip of his index finger along Robbie’s face. Almost the same path his tongue had taken earlier, but reversed. 

Robbie shivered. “What are you?” he asked, and for the first time, he asked with wonder and awe, not fear. “When you touch me, it’s like I light up from inside. I feel like me skin glows.” 

James touched his palm to the side of Robbie’s face. “I could tell you, but it won’t matter.” 

A twitch of anxiety crept through the warm glow. 

James’ expression was so sad Robbie felt it in his gut. James leaned forward until his face was nearly touching Robbie’s. 

James’ breath was a ghostly touch on his lips. He smelled like sunlight. The scent moved through him, the way James’ golden light moved through him. 

“Is it all right if I kiss you?” James breathed across his face. “Just this once?” 

Robbie nodded and leaned in to make the first contact himself. 

James mouth moved against his. His hands came up and framed Robbie’s face. Held him so gently. “You’re just as irresistible to me as you are to it, you know. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be as old as I am and to feel something as young and clean and kind as you.” 

“You won’t distract me, you know,” Robbie murmured against James’ mouth. “I still won’t let you face that thing alone.” 

The feathery golden light flared up around them. And the gentleness and delicacy fell away. 

James’ arms went around him, pulling him in roughly. Taking his mouth. Tasting him. And it didn’t seem strange or wrong that he was kissing a man. Kissing James. It felt like something he could come to crave very easily. 

Just as quickly as it had come, James’ roughness disappeared. He drew Robbie’s forehead in against his. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.” 

“For what?” A little tweak of disappointment slithered along his spine. He didn’t want James to stop kissing him. He didn’t want James to be sorry he’d kissed him. 

James’ breath whispered against his neck. “It’s all right.” 

James drew his head down on his shoulder. “Sleep now. I won’t let thoughts of that thing disturb you.” 

*****

Birdsong, shrill and happily announcing the morning, woke Robbie. 

The first rays of the early morning sun glittered through the trees and beamed through the window of the car, breaking apart to scatter the colors of the rainbow across the car seat in front of him. 

He’d been dreaming that he’d slept in the car. He blinked to clear his eyes and reached out to see if Laura had already gotten up. 

But his fingers found cold leather. That, and the twist of his spine and the ache in his right hip, told him he hadn’t been dreaming. He was lying in the back seat of his car with his coat wadded up under his head for a pillow. 

He shifted to sit up, and James’ blonde head popped up over the back of the front seat. James peered at him, looking as confused as he was, bluegreen eyes droopy with sleep. 

He said something that sounded like “mmmmph,’ but that Robbie supposed was ‘Morning’ as he knuckled his eyes and ran his hands over his sandpaper hair. 

Robbie stretched, groaning as his hips creaked and his back popped. “What the bloody hell are we doing here?” 

James grunted and stretched, reaching out with his long arms. “Car wouldn’t start, remember?” 

He turned his head from side to side, creating mini versions of the popping sounds Robbie’s back had made. 

Robbie scrubbed at his face. No, he didn’t remember. 

He really needed coffee. The whole night, from the moment they’d walked into the abandoned house seemed coated in a grayish haze. 

He turned carefully and looked up at the house. At its crumbling brick and broken, tooth-like windows and the lopsided tilt to the roofline. It loomed over them like it might tip over and come rumbling down the hillside if a strong wind hit it. 

Weird. The house hadn’t bothered him yesterday, but this morning, even in the bright morning light, it gave him the creeps. He didn’t really fancy sitting there under it. 

“Did you call for help?” 

“Your phone won’t come on at all. And my battery’s dead,” James said cheerfully. 

“Bloody hell.” Robbie patted his shirt pocket and was reaching to search his trouser pockets when James handed him his phone over the seat. 

The screen was black. And stayed black as he held the button down to turn it on. He sighed. He hated the damned things, but he had to admit, they were handy. When they worked. 

His stomach felt like it was gnawing on his backbone. And they were going to have to walk god knew how far, on no coffee, no breakfast. The closest place he could remember that might have a phone, or coffee, was, what?, back on the road where the second body had been found. 

Best not think about that. It would put him right off eating. 

James interrupted his thoughts. “I thought maybe we could push the car onto the road and try it again. It’s sitting at such an angle here. Maybe it’s flooded or something.” 

That was a daft idea. Why would sitting at an angle cause a car not to start? But if it worked, it would sure as hell be better than walking. 

Robbie shrugged and slid out of the car, letting gravity do most of the work. The car really was sitting at a hard angle. He hadn’t noticed that last night. 

The morning air was chilly, and he reached back in for his coat. Shook it out and tugged it on. It smelled funny. Like crushed grass and James. Like it had been laying in the sun. 

He yawned widely. Maybe he needed to take Laura’s advice and cut back on the coffee. If he was this off-kilter when he didn’t get any first thing, maybe he needed to switch to tea or that lemon water stuff she favored on weekends. 

He got behind the car and braced his palms on the boot. James stood in the open door with one hand on the steering wheel and pushed against the door frame with the other hand. 

Sitting on a hillside like it was, it didn’t take much muscle to get the car moving. James jumped in and allowed it to coast a ways down the gentle slope of the road before stopped it. 

Before Robbie had time to catch up, James tried the engine. It kicked over and started smoothly. 

James grinned at him in triumph as he opened the passenger door and slid in. 

Robbie half expected him to throw back his head and give out his wolf howl. 

But all he did was grin wider and nod in agreement when Robbie said, “Coffee, James. Then home.” 

*****

Laura met him at the door, her expression vacillating between concern and anger. 

“Where’ve you been?! I’ve been trying to get you all night!” 

“Sorry.” He kissed her before he turned to take off his coat and step out of his shoes. “We stopped to investigate an old, abandoned house that was down a lane close to where the bodies were. When we came out, the car wouldn’t start, and it was nearly dark, so we didn’t want to walk. And my phone is broken, and James’ phone battery was dead. We slept in the car. And then, this morning, we let it roll down a hill a ways, and it started.” He reeled it all off by rote. 

Odd, but it felt more like a shopping list, something he’d memorized, than something that had happened. 

He paused for a minute. There was an itch, right at the base of his skull. Something didn’t feel quite right. But maybe it was only that he was so tired. He yawned. 

“You couldn’t call from somewhere on your way back? I was worried.” Laura thumped him on the arm. Hard. 

That took his mind right off the itch. 

“Ow.” He backed out of range, rubbing his arm. “You’re assaulting an officer of the law, m’am.” 

“I should do more than assault you.” She glared at him. “You could have called.” 

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Sorry. I should have done. I wasn’t thinking straight. Me back’s a misery, and I’m knackered. Sleeping in a car’s not much better than no sleep at all.” 

She scowled at him a moment longer, then relented, and the annoyance creasing her brow faded. 

She headed for the kitchen. “Have you had anything to eat?” 

“An egg sandwich. And about a liter of coffee. We found a place on the way back.” 

In the kitchen, she took a bottle of parametacol out of a drawer, then turned to the sink to fill a glass with water for him. “You stopped to investigate an old, abandoned house on Halloween?” she asked, grinning. “No wonder your phone stopped working. It’s a well known fact that ghosts hate cell phones.” 

He smiled, then downed the tablets and a full glass of water before announcing, “I’m off to bed.” 

“And I’m off to work, as soon as I get all my files together.” She waved at the kitchen table where she had papers spread out. “Do you want preliminary results on the two bodies?” 

He started to say yes. But even with all the coffee, he was so tired and sleepy, he probably wouldn’t remember half of it. “Later, yeah? Me brain’s asleep.” 

She nodded and patted him as he leaned down to kiss her again,

Then he trudged up the stairs to their bedroom. 

Laura had thrown open the curtains to let in the morning sun and already made the bed. 

He crossed over and pulled the heavy curtains closed, leaving the room in semi-darkness. He grabbed the lap blanket that lay folded over a chair and tossed it onto the bed so that he wouldn’t have to bother with folding down the comforter. 

He peeled off suit coat, tie, and socks and dropped them on the chair, then shuffled into the bathroom he worked on his shirt buttons. The left cuff button didn’t want to come loose, and he was too tired to deal with it. He just slid the shirt off his other arm, then tugged it, still fastened over his left hand. Tossed it towards the clothes bin. 

As he twisted back and reached for the his toothbrush, he saw his reflection in the large mirror over the sink. 

“What the hell?” He blinked and leaned closer to the mirror, then blinked again to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. 

There was a mark on his neck, a dark pink circle right at the angle between neck and shoulder. And curving around his ribs, a bigger mark, a red black swath almost as wide as his hand. The place on his neck looked like a love bite. The place on his ribs looked like a cross between a burn and a bruise. 

He turned sideways and probed at the spot. It was as tender as a bruise, too. 

Where in that rote list of the night’s activities had this happened? 

He had no idea. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember anything about the house other than that dusty, littered first room, though there was something about a basement. Had he and James gone into a basement? 

He couldn’t really remember going from the house back to the car last night, just...ruts and clumps of grass under his feet. And the stars overhead. He couldn’t remember the car refusing to start. Or discovering that his phone had died. For that matter, he couldn’t remember climbing into the back seat of the car to sleep. 

It all felt...wrong. The night. His fatigue. The marks on his body. He felt wrong. 

The air felt wrong. Too thick. Foul. 

His breath sped up just a little. Heart rate ratcheting up just slightly the way it did when he knew he was walking into danger. 

A ridiculous thought slipped into his mind. The place on his side looked like it had been caused by an octopus tentacle. It had that pointed shape and faint marks in the middle of the blackish bruise that looked just like where suckers would have grabbed onto his skin. 

Where he’d been touched by a dark, smoky, barely visible thing. An old thing. An evil thing. 

In his mind, he heard James’ voice. _‘You would call it dierum malorum. Ancient evil.’_

And with a horrifying sense of deja vu, the memory of the whole night came crashing into him. 

_James. Golden James protecting him. Naked against him. Orgasm so intense it needed a new word. James inside of him. Bliss that was like floating, flying. Flying apart._

James kissing him so sweetly. ‘You’re just as irresistible to me as you are to it.’ 

An evil, invisible thing. Smoke like ice on his skin. Nightmares and screaming.

He stepped back, hand flying up in protest. He hit the bathroom door. Pain ricocheted down into his elbow. 

_His elbow going numb as something cold and evil seeped up his sleeve._

He’d felt all this before. 

He’d remembered all this before. Last night, in the car. 

His thoughts spiraled out of control. Out of sense and logic. Remembering things that made no sense. 

Lying in James’ arms. James’ mouth on him. Whispering, _‘Just a taste. Just enough that I can feel you. Know you’re safe.’_ , and when he nodded, sucking his blood through his skin. The sweet pain of it, sending him spiraling into an orgasm that was like a sky full of stars exploding in his mind. 

Why hadn’t he remembered that? Why hadn’t he remembered what happened before that, in the house? That evil thing, questing along his skin. 

That thing chortling in his mind. _Such a sweet morsel._

James. All glittering gold, reaching out to him. _Ir˙ula, we were sometimes called. Ancient ones._

And screaming. Someone screaming. Him? A woman? Val. 

His heart felt like it was shattering. His breath was coming so hard and fast it hurt his chest. If he didn’t stop breathing so rapidly, he was going to hyperventilate. Laura would find him passed out on the bathroom floor. 

He stumbled out into the bedroom, reaching blindly for the chair. 

And the thing scraped inside his mind. 

It was there. In his and Laura’s white and green bedroom. In the dim light. 

Almost visible against the clean white walls. Ribbons of transparent gray waving against the neatly tucked and folded comforter. 

He remembered the pressure of James’ fingers on his chest as he said, _‘It has almost no power in the light. Probably the only reason it came up before the sun had set was to get to you.’_

He dove for the window, grabbing at the curtains to yank them open. To tear them off the wall if he had to. 

And the thing touched him. 

All the horrors it had dredged up last night ripped through his mind. Multiplied. Blood and rot and screams. _A man so horror stricken, so mad with pain, that his muscles tightened down until he broke his own bones to escape._

A scream ripped out of him, and he doubled over and clutched at his stomach, sure he was going to throw up. But his breakfast had turned into a hard lump in his stomach. A rock that rattled and battered, threatening to crack his bones from the inside. 

The thing that held him shivered in almost orgasmic glee. 

Through the haze of nightmares billowing out of his mind like hot steam, he heard Laura yelling his name. Her feet pounding up the stairs. Coming to him. 

He tore himself away from the invisible grip. Wheeled to stop her. To slam the door before she could enter. 

But she was faster than him. She tore through the door and slid to a stop. 

“Laura, go back!” he shouted. 

Her eyes were wide as her gaze darted around the room. She saw him, but not the thing. His words didn’t make sense to her because she couldn’t see anything that would alarm her. 

The thing turned its awareness on her. 

Robbie knew the moment it touched her because all the blood drained from her face. 

He shouted her name and ran towards her. Slammed into a wall of evil, as black and thick as old ink, but invisible. Questing tendrils slid out of it, over his bare chest. Searching. Searching. 

As if it considered Laura not worth its time, it let her go. She fell back against the wall and slid to the floor, unmoving. 

It turned its attention on him again. 

He fought it this time. Better than before, because Laura needed his help. Because the fear that she was dead filled him with so much fury it shielded him. 

But it didn’t matter. The thing was stronger than him, stronger than any shields he could erect. 

_Tires screeched. A woman screamed._

It would just keep battering at him until he would be glad to die so that he could be free of it. 

Then with a hiss of fury that matched his own, a screech of pain and howling laughter, it let him go. It ripped itself away from him so abruptly that he stumbled. It contracted in on itself and was gone as quickly as it had come. 

The edge of the chair jabbed into his hip as he fell against it. When he righted himself, James was there. 

Coming through the door. His golden aura thick and roiling, reaching up to the ceiling. 

He swept in, an avenging savior who was no angel. Went to his knees beside Laura and pressed his hand to her neck. Robbie could see the relief wash over James’ face, and he knew that she was all right even before James said it. 

“She’s all right. Just passed out.” 

James slid his hands beneath Laura, stood up with her in his arms as if she weighed nothing. He laid her gently on the bed and pulled the blanket up over her. He passed his fingertips over her forehead before turning to Robbie. 

“She’s all right,” he said again. “Are you?” 

James came towards him, concern written on his features. Hands reaching out for him. The shimmering aura faded with every step, and he became less avenging angel and more James. 

All the anger and fear Robbie had endured in the last few seconds fastened on that anxious, angelic face. 

Robbie forced his trembling legs to work. Rushed at James and wrapped his fists in the lapels of James’ black coat and twisted him around. Shoved him back with such fury that the wall vibrated when Robbie slammed him into it. 

“What did you do? Did you wipe it all out of me mind? Steal me memories?” 

James shrank back from his anger. Raising his hands, palm out. “Robbie...” 

“You bastard! How could you?!” Robbie shook him. Like he was a doll. Like he weighed nothing. Like he wasn’t something ancient powerful being who could probably rip him in half with one hand. 

And for just a moment, Robbie saw the powerful, terrible thing that James could be. Just for a moment, anger colored James’ eyes. Gold washed through the bluegreen from the pupil out, turning his eyes into multi-colored fiery jewels. Gleaming power shot out and up from his shoulders. His aura flashed, quick as lightning, like a strobe firing. 

It stung Robbie’s hands, traveled up his arms like an electric shock, making his joints feel like the ligaments had melted to jelly. Showing him how much James could hurt him if he choose to. 

Robbie didn’t care. He didn’t care if James burned him to ash. He tightened his grip on James’ coat, twisting his fingers in the thick cloth. He slammed him against the wall again, pleased with the sound James’ skull made as it hit the wall. “You stole me memories.”

Pain washed over James’ face. He reached up and pushed Robbie’s arms away gently, breaking his grip as if Robbie had no more strength than a child. 

Energy crackled where their skin met, but this contact didn’t burn like it had before. James held him still. 

“I’m sorry,” James said, and his voice was crackled with pain. “I did it to keep you safe. You kept saying you wouldn’t let me go back to the house alone. I couldn’t risk you going back there.”

“But it didn’t protect me, did it? That thing came after me. It touched Laura.” 

Robbie knew he wasn’t being fair. James had stayed with him when he should have run. James had saved him. And James wasn’t responsible for that thing coming after him. 

But he didn’t feel fair and logical right now. He felt torn and tugged and pulled in more directions than he could go. James and that thing had trapped him in a nightmare of deja vu that felt like it wouldn’t end. 

James pushed him back gently, away from the rippling pale gold edge of his aura. “She won’t remember. She won’t know. I’ll make sure.” 

As if the cooling of James’ energy affected him, Robbie’s fury eased. He tried to hold onto it. He wanted to be angry about his memory, about Laura. But it was hard. Because as much as he hated what James had done to him, he didn’t want Laura remembering that thing’s touch. He wanted James to steal that memory. And understanding that, how could he blame James for taking away his memory of that thing? 

But it was different, because James hadn’t just hidden his memories of the horror. James had hidden himself. If Robbie was honest with himself, really honest, that was part of what fueled his anger, his sense of betrayal, wasn’t it? 

“What if it doesn’t work on her either? I remembered everything, when I saw this.” He backed away and gestured towards the marks on his neck and ribs. 

James flushed when he looked at the bruise on his neck, and his eyes narrowed with anger at the mark on Robbie’s ribs. “I don’t understand why your memories came back. You did it last night, too, the first time you woke up. You shouldn’t be able to break through and remember.” 

Robbie thought he knew. The memory of James kept coming back because he wanted it so much. Not remembering that thing might be a blessing, but he didn’t want to go back to thinking those glimpses of gold around James were a trick of the light. 

James reached for him, hand held out like it had been last night, when all this started. 

It was too much, all of it. That thing coming for him and touching Laura. What he’d been through last night. What he was feeling now. 

He backed away from James. “No. Don’t touch me. You might take me memories away again. And then that thing can come at me without me even knowing what’s happening.” 

James sank back against the wall. He gestured towards the mark on Robbie’s ribs. “I only wanted to heal it.” His hands fell limp to his sides. “I’m sorry.” 

The raw sincerity, the pain, in James’ voice stung him. 

Robbie turned away from him. Went over to the bed and felt Laura’s forehead, felt the strong, steady pulse in her neck. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully. But he couldn’t get the picture of her slumping to the floor out of his mind. 

James hadn’t moved from where he was slouched against the wall. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I only wanted to protect you.”

Robbie touched Laura’s cheek gently, then rounded on him. Hissed, “Then stop saying ‘I’m sorry’ and do something! Protect me. Mark me. Make it where that thing can’t touch me, and let’s go back and kill it!” 

James wouldn’t meet his gaze. His aura faded completely, sinking into his skin. He looked pale, his skin ivory and almost translucent. 

“You don’t know what it means,” he said in a tone as thin as his pale skin looked. 

Robbie closed his eyes and breathed in and out. In and out. Tamping down his fury. “So tell me.” 

James curled even further in on himself. “It’s not just a mark. It’s a binding. It will bind you to me for the rest of your life. Maybe even beyond that. You would be _mine._ ” 

James curled his fingers in over his heart as if he was clutching something to it. “ _Mine._ In a way you don’t understand. I could make you do anything I wanted you to, and you would have no power to resist.” 

Robbie rocked back from the tired vehemence in James’ voice. The dismay that told him how much James feared the binding. 

But Robbie didn’t understand. What James was saying didn’t seem that horrible to him. Weren’t they already bound? By friendship? By trust? By the things they’d been through together, even before last night? 

How much more bound could he be to someone whose life he’d saved? Who’d saved his?

Remembering that James had saved him washed away the last of his anger. Made him remember how much he’d wanted the comfort of James’ outstretched hand last night. Made him remember the man he knew James was. 

“But you wouldn’t abuse that. You wouldn’t make me do things.” 

James laughed. A harsh, bitter sound. “I keep telling you, I’m not an angel. You don’t begin to understand the depth of the temptation when you have that kind of power over someone.” 

“You’re not like that,” he said. 

James looked up at him, and his eyes flashed that jeweled gold. “I am. I might not want to be. But I am. I would steal your memories. I would steal your will. My need to protect you would overcome any wish I had to respect you and let you live your life. Do you want to give me that kind of power over you?” 

Robbie didn’t answer right away. He could understand what James was saying. How often did they already act that way with each other? But wasn’t that what friends did? Try to influence each other’s behavior when they saw danger, physical or emotional? If he could order James to do something, or not do something, to keep him safe, to keep him happy...would he? 

He breathed in a deep breath and met James’ gaze squarely. “Yes. To keep us safe, Laura, and you, and me...I’ll give you that kind of power over me.” 

Something flared in James so strongly he couldn’t control it. 

Robbie felt it blow through him like a shockwave. Elation? Sadness? Despair? Joy? It was there, then gone, so quickly he couldn’t read it. 

“I can’t.” James’ voice shook. He turned away, stood facing to the wall. Shoulders bowed in misery. 

Despair, then. He could see it in the line of James’ spine. In the opening and closing of his fists. “You’ve never bound anyone before?” 

“I have,” James admitted with shame in his voice. And then he turned back around. “But I’ve never bound anyone I cared for as much as I care for you.” His aura blossomed around him, glowing gold and shimmering like sunlight on water.

This emotion Robbie could read as if it was written on his skin. An answering wave of sensation flowered in him. 

Laura sighed as if she could feel them in her sleep. 

James glanced at her, then turned his gaze on Robbie. Bluegreen intensity glowing through the gold. The scent of sunlight filled the room. 

Robbie breathed it in. He said simply, “I trust you.” 

Something in James broke. His eyes went wide and his mouth twisted. He looked as young and vulnerable as he had that day in the street, after he’d seen Will’s video, when Robbie had walked away from him. 

This time, it was James who tried to turn away, but Robbie went to him, reached through the shimmering energy, shivering as it ran over his skin, and caught James’ arm. 

Heat poured off James. It seeped into him, warming him from the inside out. “What you almost said in the car yesterday... What you didn’t want to tell me... Alone, you don’t have the power, but together, we can destroy this thing, yeah?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe. Something like that isn’t so easily destroyed.” 

“But if it’s still there, we have to try, right?” 

James nodded miserably, face shuttering as though he already knew what Robbie was going to say.

“But I have to be marked, bound to you, so that we can work together against it?” 

“Yes.” 

“And Laura? Will she be safe if we leave her here?” 

James nodded. “It doesn’t want her. It has no reason to come back here for her.” 

“I don’t get it. What’s so feckin’ special about me?” 

James’ lips turned up in a grimace that was part bitter smile. “Didn’t you hear it say? You’re sweet.” 

Robbie gave him a push. It seemed strange to be pushing an ancient being wreathed in sunlight, but...it was still James. “Don’t be daft.” 

James sighed. “It’s because your soul is young and new.” 

“And Laura’s is ancient?” 

James nearly managed a weak smile. “Mine is ancient. Hers is just...middle aged. But you. You’re a baby, as souls go. Sweet and fresh, like... Like the air after rain.” 

“Very poetic,” Robbie said dryly. “And daft. How can me soul be fresh and new? I’ve got six decades of life, me!” 

“It’s not about how many years you’ve lived in this lifetime, Robbie. It’s about—“ 

But Robbie held up his hand and cut James off. “Never mind. Tell me later.” He had the feeling that any explanation was just going to make his head spin. And draw him further from his purpose. 

He squared his shoulders. “So. Let’s do this. Whatever you have to do. For real this time.” His voice filled with conviction that he was surprised to realize he actually felt. Filled with excitement, a simmering arousal he dared not examine. Not yet. His stomach was tied in knots. 

James whispered, “It will steal everything you are. Destroy everything you’ve built. You’ll be mine in a way you can’t even comprehend. Nothing will...” 

“Measure up to what I feel when you touch me,” Robbie finished for him. The excitement in his belly was growing. Sparks becoming tendrils of flame. It would take almost nothing to set it blazing. “I know. I’ve already felt it. Last night, when you put the fantasy in me mind.” 

James looked away from him, flushing. 

But this was different than James’ fear over the binding. This was something else. Embarrassment over the sex part? He couldn’t believe that someone who could touch him the way James had touched him would be shy. “What is it?” 

“Robbie...” James hesitated, then said, “I didn’t put that in your mind. I told you it would take body fluids. And I put the certainty in your mind that I was going to mark you. You chose the method of bonding. Not me.” 

“You mean I—?” And now he was the one who flushed. “I decided you were going to...?” 

James nodded. “It doesn’t have to be sex. It can be done with only an exchange of blood. Though blood _and_ semen make the binding stronger.” 

“So what I felt, when I...when we—that wasn’t real?” 

“It was a shadow of what will happen. What you’ll feel.” 

Finally, some of what James had been trying to tell him reached through. To be consumed by James... Excitement and fear flared in him like a switch had been thrown. Where the energy of James was touching him, the gold turned shimmering red. 

The pain in James’ face told him that James knew what he was thinking. That he could feel the arousal swirling through him. 

“I’ve lost you already, haven’t I?” James whispered, despair robbing his voice of the golden smoothness. “I tried to protect you, but I’ve already changed you. I’ll be the one who wipes the newness off your soul. I’ll be the one who destroys you.” 

Suddenly, through the red haze of arousal and need, understanding punched Robbie like a fist. He saw it all, spread out in front of him like evidence pasted on a case wall. With pictures and comments written in red and little arrows pointing to the important connections. 

The entity had been elated last night when it thought James was marking him. It had backed off and left them alone. But James hadn’t marked him. And somehow, the thing had known it. Maybe it had known it then. And it had come at him again. And again, it had backed off the moment James stepped in to protect him. 

Robbie sank down onto the chair. His tie slithered to the floor. He pushed it away with his foot. The soft length of silk felt too much like a ribbon of cold air touching his ankle. 

He looked up at James. “None of this has been about me. None of it,” he said. “Maybe me soul’s fresh as spring rain. Maybe the things in me mind are better than most people’s. God knows I have more material to draw from than most.” 

He wiped at his forehead to ward off the images. “But this whole thing has been a performance for you. It didn’t come up into the daylight for me. It came up for you. And I was the bait it used to get you.” 

James knelt down in front of him, stared into his eyes. But this was his work gaze, the intensity of James solving a mystery. “I felt it in the basement. Before it went after you.” 

“And it felt you. It sensed what would scare you. What would hurt you the most.” 

James’ breath caught in his throat. A wash of flame passed through his eyes. 

Robbie caught his hands and held them. 

James’ hands trembled in his. “And it’s won,” he said bitterly. “I can let it keep coming at you until it kills you. Or I can keep you safe. And destroy all that you are.” 

“Maybe I’m not that easy to destroy either.” Robbie touched James’ face, running his fingertip down the side from forehead to jaw. Just the way James had touched him last night. “I trust you. I need you to trust me.” 

James shivered, and gold sparkles shimmered behind his shoulders. 

Robbie felt them all over his chest and down his back. His nipples tightened. He laughed, husky and excited, as tendrils of heat reached into his belly and blazed into a shimmering gold fire. 

“You said you were no angel,” he rasped. “Now prove it.” 

Despair and arousal made the gold in James’ eyes flare. James caught his hand, drew him to his feet. Towards the door. 

Robbie glanced back at Laura, sleeping peacefully on their bed. Deep down in his belly, a little pang of regret and guilt twinged. But it wasn’t enough to make him let go of James’ hand. 

As he closed the door and following the shimmer of James’ footsteps down the stairs, a ribbony chortle of glee scrabbled at the back of Robbie’s skull. 

 

###


End file.
